Doctoral Dissertations

Date of Award

5-1996

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Major

Psychology

Major Professor

Leonard Handler

Committee Members

Jim Gorney, Bob Wahler, Charlie Cohen, Larry James

Abstract

This study examines the clinical, theoretical and research literature in regard to the assessment of narcissistic personality disorder (NPD). A review of NPD allowed for the generation of some hypotheses regarding a number of characteristics which may be useful in the differentiation of NPD. The present study will compare the indices/scores, from various modes of assessment, of NPD patients with related and unrelated groups of outpatient personality disorders as well as a non-clinical group. These five dimensions- aggression, defensive organization, dependency/orality themes, quality of object relations, and self-absorbtion-have lent themselves to testable questions concerning the differences between NPD and other personality disorders.

This study will be the first to assess the test characteristics of NPD patients diagnosed according to DSM-IV criteria. It will then be possible to investigate the relationship, if any, between the various test indices which are identified as being useful in the discrimination of NPD with DSM-IV criteria through a series of correlational analyses. This study will also be the first to assess the clinical efficacy of the MMPI-2 and Rorschach in the correct classification of those individuals with NPD. Diagnostic efficiency statistics will be calculated under four different conditions in a clinically relevant manner.

The results of this study support the hypotheses that variables of the MMPI-2 and Rorschach can be used to differentiate NPD patients from a non-clinical sample, as well as from cluster A and cluster C personality disorders. Also, the findings presented here show that variables from these two measures can be used to identify NPD patients in relation to other personality disorders from within the B cluster. Both measures were found to be empirically related to DSM-IV diagnostic criteria for NPD. However, variables from the Rorschach, but not the MMPI-2, could also be employed for classification purposes in ways which were clinically meaningful in the diagnosis of NPD.

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